their own charge, reduced provinces of that
island, which they converted to their own profit. Separate jurisdictions
and principalities were established by these lordly conquerors: the
power of peace and war was assumed: military law was exercised over
the Irish whom they subdued, and, by degrees, over the English by whose
assistance they conquered; and, after their authority had once taken
root, deeming the English institutions less favorable to barbarous
dominion, they degenerated into mere Irish, and abandoned the garb,
language, manners, and laws of their mother country.[**]

By all this imprudent conduct of England, the natives of its dependent
state remained still in that abject condition into which the northern
and western parts of Europe were sunk, before they received civility and
slavery from the refined policy and irresistible bravery of Rome. Even
at the end of the sixteenth century, when every Christian nation was
cultivating with ardor every civil art of life, that island, lying in a
temperate climate, enjoying a fertile soil, accessible in its situation,
possessed of innumerable harbors, was still, notwithstanding these
advantages, inhabited by a people whose customs and manners approached
nearer those of savages than of barbarians.[***]

* Sir J. Davies, p. 102, 103, etc.

** Sir J. Davies, p. 133, 134, etc

*** See Spenser's Account of Ireland, throughout.

As the rudeness and ignorance of the Irish were extreme they were sunk
below the reach of that curiosity and love of novelty by which every
other people in Europe had been seized at the beginning of that century,
and which had engaged them in innovations and religious disputes, with
which they were still so violently agitated. The ancient superstition,
the practices and observances of their fathers, mingled and polluted
with many wild opinions, still maintained an unshaken empire over
them; and the example alone of the English was sufficient to render the
reformation odious to the prejudiced and discontented Irish. The old
opposition of manners, laws, and interest was now inflamed by religious
antipathy; and the subduing and civilizing of that country seemed to
become every day more difficult and more impracticable.

The animosity against the English was carried so far by the Irish, that,
in an insurrection raised by two sons of the earl of Clanricarde, they
put to the sword all the inhabitants of the town of Athenry, though
Iri